[Report] 2025 National Falls Prevention Action Plan

Falls have become the most frequent fatal injury in the United States for people older than 65. Other serious falls land hundreds of thousands more older people in emergency departments or hospital beds, costing an estimated $80 billion annually, mostly paid by Medicare and Medicaid. What many of us don’t know is that many serious falls and fall-related injuries can be prevented. During the past 20 years, evidence-based programs, services and technologies have been developed that help more older adults to stand tall and stay active. This very American ingenuity provides real hope for a future where many more of us are “falls free” and able to live our lives to their full potential.

Recognizing both the scope of the challenge and the opportunity ahead, the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and its National Falls Prevention Resource Center, with support from the federal Administration for Community Living, has prepared this 2025 National Falls Prevention Action Plan. It expands on and refines the plans issued in 2005 and 2015, builds on the accomplishments resulting from the recommendations in those earlier plans, and reflects an awareness of what needs to be done to remove falling from the roster of top public health problems.

The production of this updated plan was an intensely collaborative process. It was guided by NCOA and a steering committee of 13 falls prevention leaders.

The details of their discussions, and the full measure of their ideas, comprise the heart of this new Action Plan and are described in the following pages. The plan sets out these six goals – and priorities and action steps for achieving each – in the service of reducing and preventing the number of falls by older Americans:

1. Expand public awareness, messaging and advocacy
2. Broaden funding across sectors
3. Scale evidence-based and proven interventions
4. Drive more clinical and community partnerships
5. Generate new technologies and expand access to existing technologies
6. Improve data

Call to Action

For each goal and strategy, the Action Plan lays out barriers to and opportunities for achieving success along with specific priorities and action steps. Each chapter also describes what each sector or organization with a hand in falls prevention can do to help achieve the goals and identifies indicators that will guide an understanding of when and how success has been realized. As we well know, there are many contributors to falls. Not surprisingly, given the areas reflected in this plan, a wide-ranging set of actions is required to make a meaningful difference.

Read report, attached below.

Also, visit NCOA's Fall Prevention Awareness Resources (videos, handouts, and more) and Bone Health and Falls Prevention page.